Скачать или смотреть The Arts of Ancient Meroe: Reassessing an Ancient African Visual Culture

The visual culture of Meroe encompasses a rich body of sculpture, as well as decorated pyramid chapels, temples, ritual objects, jewelry, ceramics, and faience and gold plaques. The art of Meroe is complex. Egyptian and classical elements, alongside indigenous features and tastes, are visible in much but not all of its art. The presence of these foreign features has allowed an outdated and unsupported Egyptocentric viewpoint to shape much of the discourse about Meroitic visual culture. Constructs that present Napatan and Meroitic Period arts as imitative and derivative of Egyptian art and, to a lesser extent, classical art have obscured the vibrant Kushite nature of their visual arts, as well as the very independent manner in which Kushite artists use and understand foreign features, particularly Egyptian ones. This presentation will explore the essential Kushite nature of ancient Meroitic art demonstrating how an Egyptocentric approach has, as in other areas of Kushite Studies, distorted our understanding of it. While providing visual pleasure in its own right, an exploration of Meroitic art free of an Egyptocentric viewpoint offers insights into the minds, activities, and tastes of the Middle Nile Valley's ancient inhabitants- a particularly precious gift given that written sources from Meroe are both scarce and not fully translated.